After Party is made up of a couple of songs that were left off of the last album, as well as some new tracks that we wrote after Dan joined the band. Together, we feel like this collection of songs really gives an overall representation of what Down By Five is about: reggae vibes, heavy riffs, melodies that get stuck in your head and most importantly, music that’s very conducive to having a good time.

This album was absolutely a labor of love for us – we recorded and mixed the entire thing ourselves – and with that in mind, we wanna share the love, so we’re offering After Party completely FREE for a limited time! Download your copy today!

Today’s the day we’re dropping our newest single, ‘Undertow,’ from our upcoming album, ‘After Party.’ This is another DIY-style video that we pieced together ourselves using clips from some of our most recent shows.

We’re really excited about this track and hope you all enjoy it. After Party will be released very soon, so check back for more details. In the meantime, you can download a copy of Undertow for free from our bandcamp page: http://downbyfive.bandcamp.com/track/undertow

Friends, we’re extremely happy to announce that we’ll be opening for Ballyhoo! on August 22nd at Southland Ballroom right here in Raleigh! This is a huge opportunity for us, sharing the stage with a band that we’ve all listened to for a long time, so we look forward to seeing you there rocking out with us!

All three bands brought out great crowds, and the combination of rock, reggae, punk and ska really seemed to mesh well that night.

We followed that up by hitting the road and heading up to Williamsburg, VA to share the stage with The Hostile Apostles, A 311 Tribute Band at Oceans and Ale. For the past few months, TJ has played a couple of shows with The Hostile Apostles and taken on the role of SA, so since he was already going to be up there, we worked it out so that DB5 could open.

Man, Oceans and Ale does it right. If you’re around that area and have never been – GO. Great food, awesome service and they play kick ass music. We’ve requested they open one in Raleigh.

We can’t say enough about all of the promotion that O&A did leading up to this show, and The Hostile Apostles brought a ton of people down from DC as well, so this place was ready to go before we even hit the stage.

Even though we were only playing a short set, we felt the love before we were finished with our opener. The crowd was fantastic, and definitely had us amped the whole time. We also got into the 311-fun by throwing in a cover of our own:

After we wrapped up, we got to jam out to 311 tunes for the rest of the night, courtesy of The Hostile Apostles, and they didn’t disappoint.

Both shows were a total blast, and they’ve really gotten us motivated to get this train rolling. We’re in the final stages of wrapping up our new album, and we’re working on lining up more shows in the coming months so we can share it with you all.

It doesn’t feel like that long ago that we were going back-and-forth to Sound Write Recording Studio to work on what became Emergency Party. While making that album, we had to cut down on the number of songs that were going to be on it, just from a time/expense standpoint. Leaving certain songs out was not an easy decision, but we did so knowing that at some point in the not-too-distant future, we’d get ‘em out there one way or another. Well, here goes nothing…

In addition to some of the “b-sides” that didn’t make EP, we’ve written a couple of new tunes and we’ve decided to take a stab at recording this whole beast ourselves. Up first – drum tracks:

TJ and I knocked out all six songs in one session at our practice space, and after he’s finished putting together a rough mix, the next steps will be adding bass, guitars, vocals and any extra bells and whistles that’ll contribute to the badassness of these songs. We really can’t wait to see what we can do with this album, and hopefully our enthusiasm comes through when you get a chance to hear it.

Hello! The CD Release show is right around the corner, and we wanted all of our friends to be able to sing along, soooooo…..

We have made EMERGENCY PARTY available 2 weeks early! You can still order the compact disc, and you will get an instant digital download of the entire album. The digital-only option is now available as well.

The entire album is also now streaming for FREE, so learn the words and come sing along on February 1st at Southland Ballroom in Raleigh.

If you haven’t yet, check out the music video we made for the song ‘Hours and Minutes’, which is on the new album.